Recent Posts

Most students are now back to school, so we should expect market changes to what they were like in June/July. There will probably be less buyers, and also less sellers, which may be good or bad depending on the point of view. Less buyers isn't a very good thing, but we can live with it, because there are still weekends. Less sellers may mean less supply and then higher prices, and it also means less competition, which means less work hassle for us auctioneers.

Be ready for these changes, and take advantage of the sudden lower number of players. Take this opportunity to make a statement for yourself on the markets you play. Show competitors you're not gone, and pull your weight for this; you may get people out of *your* market if you did the right thing during Summer time (I hope you weren't a cricket ^^).

Play Zamboni style (JMTC forum members know what I'm talking about) if you have what it takes, or just take it softly if that's your own way. As long as you have a strong presence, there's no wrong way to go. But make sure you have the money for it beforehand!

This "event" is already causing changes (most likely on every server). Check this topic from the JMTC Forum.

-(Thanks Jean de La Fontaine, for creating the fable "The Ant and the Cricket", otherwise I wouldn't have been able to metaphorise this post ^^)

On the last few days I've been prospecting some Titanium Ore, and got quite a few epic gems now which I haven't posted yet. I'm using them for my own gear still, and I'll cut and list them soon. I haven't had much time for auctioneering, but one thing that's been working for me is cutting gems for people in Trade. For 30-50g a gem! And damn, is it easy money. I make 200g minimum per day just with this!

Money making has been slow because I haven't been able to play for long periods, and I also make an effort to pop on the JMTC Forum and here, so it's a tight schedule. Expect a rise of money and raiding related posts in a few days or so. This short time schedule won't last much longer.

I found this topic on the EU Official Discussion forums (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=10543458711&sid=1) and it sounds like a very good idea to me. The poster happened to quote someone from the US forums.

"I was so pumped out about this idea and those that followed by others in that thread that I had to share it with the EU community.

Link to original post: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19377462227&sid=1

The actual post:

Please do this, Blizzard. I want Deathwing to patrol the skies of Azeroth, occasionally swooping down to attack towns. This is a newer, bolder, more dangerous Azeroth from the looks of things. We need Deathwing to keep the fear of him in us. We need him to not pull an Arthas and constantly retreat saying "I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, GADGET! NEXT TIIIIME!" Please have him actually attack our towns regularly. Or not even that. I would be happy just seeing him flying around. It would be awesome to be questing somewhere, the sky darkens, and you look up to see Deathwing soaring above you.

Edit: While Deathwing is insidious, and has definitely plotted and manipulated in the past, it's clear now that the time for that is past him. He's made his move, and he is showing himself to be a force of nature. The story introducing him for this expansion describes him as erupting from Deepholme with a primal rage.

Behaving like the Lich King has simply would not fit him at this point in time. He is a hurricane of fire and death, and his destruction of Azeroth is not complete. Please retain this force of nature feel to him throughout the expansion.

2nd Edit: Someone later in the topic mentions that this might make it look like Deathwing really has nothing better to do than roam around menacing. No real plans to make, in other words. I think that's a good point!

But I think we could have both. The key is to not make this occurance TOO common. I think it's important that Deathwing make his presence known, but it's also important that in doing this his presence isn't trivialized. Every hour would be way too often, I think. I'd say not even every day."

How amazing would it be to have Deathwing flying around in Azeroth, making you aware of his presence? I totally agree that the Lich King was kind of weak, because we get to lay him down a few times, and that shouldn't happen if he is so powerful as he should be. At least, he should be quite an opponent on 3.3 :)

What about you, what would you like to see updated in Azeroth? Would you like new features like this one?

My suggestion...more legendary weapons, instead of only 1 per patch. They implemented Val'anyr (*drool*) on 3.1, now they say they will implement a new legendary weapon (Shadowmourne) for Hunters and DKs anyone who can use 2H axes (even though "The stat allocation may not benefit hunters or shamans as much as warriors, DKs or paladins. ") on 3.3, and a caster one on Cataclysm. Why not implement more than 1 weapon at the same time, but making them way harder to obtain? That way, every class would be able to get a legendary. And I mean they should be HARD to get, very hard. The kind of hard that makes you think it's impossible, the kind of hard that shows why it's called a Legendary.

I found the reason why zombies are always hungry for brains...and why that hunger is never gone. It's because there are a lot of brainless beings in this game (and I don't mean all the brainless creatures, like basilisks and raptors that never drop their brain for that damn quest).

The amount of stupidity is amazingly annoying. It's incredible how some people behave. Fortunately us auctioneers can take advantage of part of their ignorance, but that's not what I'm talking about right now.
Lack of brains tends to guide the (close-to-)no-brain to a few already existing stereotypes. Those are: Death Knights with names that contain any variation of "Dk", "Death" and "Knight"... -- Night Elves named after the LotR character Legolas (Légolas, Lègolas, Lególas, Legòlas, Légólas...I could go on all day) -- People in guilds like «grate nation of spartans», yes written exactly that way.
Surprisingly (or not), every single person that I've ever met and that matches these stereotypes are either slackers, annoying or a combination of both.

On the "other side" of this issue, the game is getting easier (so says the majority, I believe). But the brainless aren't getting better; in fact, they may be even worse. I totally resignate to the fact that this kind of people exist, because I'm used to interacting with similar beings in the real world too; they're unavoidable. If they're hopeless beings, why ease the game? Or is it not aimed at people like this?

Now, to specific situations.

Beggers. I'm willing to say 0,1% of beggers have a tiny piece of brain, and that's because I once found one that wasn't totally hopeless. I taught him that meat and bird eggs from places where he could quest were very valuable at the AH and he actually took my advice and thanked me a few days later. Other than that case, they surely can't think by themselves, and actually may live in a world (imaginary one) where people actually care for each other.

Slackers. They are too lazy to play properly. They may have the skills in them, but it's just not worth it, because other people do their work for them, so why bother? Generally, they are also permanently skint, and probably fit in the first category on their alts.

They always say they "cannot" do something by themselves. I always tell them "try harder, quitting makes you a loser". And being a loser in a place where you start your 'journey' just like everyone, and have the same opportunities as everyone, is only due to YOUR behaviour. Do something for a living, just like you would in real life!

That's right, I digged all this begger and slacker people arguments just to say that we all have the same possibilities in this game, and if you can't do as much as other player, you're definitely not using your brain, therefore you're on your way to being brainless. Try harder (read, better), and you'll reach the goals you want. You can achieve anything in this game, if you put the due effort to it. This applies to everything; raiding, PvP, auctioneering. You will obviously never make it if you don't try. Play intelligently, and actually do something for yourself instead of being part of the group I mentioned above.

What we were finding is that in many cases things had just become so complicated that players were not making intelligent decisions based on their knowledge of how various stats benefited them. That sounds like what you wanted to have happened, but it really wasn't. Instead players would pull up a BiS list, or plug the item into a spreadsheet. If the answer was "upgrade" they equipped the item. We could pretty much just give the items a name and art and make all the stats not displayed.

If you were one of those players who picked up a piece and understood how armor pen vs. attack power benefited you or whether defense was still worth collecting after you had hit crit immunity, then you were in the minority. Hopefully we can get back to a system where eyeballing an item's stats has some chance of being right. (Source)

How exactly will choosing stats be hard in Cataclysm? If we analyze the new stat system (based on the information so far), we have:

MP5 removed, Spirit will be the regen stat for everyone.

Spell Power removed, Intellect will raise your damage/healing.

Attack Power removed. Leather/Mail armour will give Attack Power through Agility and Plate will give Attack Power through Strength.

Defense removed. Tanks will get it through talents, so they don't have to get 'capped' through gear.

Armor Penetration removed. It seems it's too hard "mathy".

Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defense, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armor Penetration are removed.

Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.

With this, we have 5 main stats: Spirit, Intellect, Stamina, Strenght and Haste.

Can we think about this in a non-easy mode way, by any chance...? I mean, Warrior and Death Knight tanks will stack Stamina and Strength (and DKs will also stack Haste because of the quickest rune gaining); Paladin tanks will stack Stamina and Strenght (and Intellect? Not sure as I'm not into Pally tanks); Druid tanks will stack Stamina and Agility. Healers will stack Intellect, Spirit and Haste (considering Haste will stay the same for healers). As for DPS:
Rogues - Agility/Haste/(Stamina);
Hunters - Agility/Haste/(Stamina);
Mage - Intellect/Spirit(?)...You see where I'm getting.

Am I missing something here, or is Blizzard intending to make those fewer stats much more complex than what was shown?

Note, I'm not whining on this post, I'm just looking at information and trying to understand it, based on what everyone knows so far. The ultimate difference between two players isn't their stats; it's skill. And Blizzard will never be able to change that. :)

Other than gear itself, the stat changes will also cause severe gem changes (and, therefore, Jewelcrafting changes). There's still not much to speculate on at the moment, because there was (close to) no information on this; we have to wait a bit longer.

Markco at Just My Two Copper made a good point 2 days ago, regarding these changes. He said that "Gems will either be destroyed or changed in some way".

I believe this change won't happen like the prismatic to coloured Dragon's Eye change, mainly because they wouldn't be able to change AP gems into Agility/Strength according to the player's will. These changes imply something bigger, something like destroying the gems themselves (removing them from the game), which means a demand boom for gems.

I'm 100% sure JC won't be negatively affected by these changes, and I'm confident that everyone will have to re-gem, meaning thousands of profit (some might be saying "Dream on!", but hey I'm a dreamer ^^). So, considering the information already given remains unchanged (ah, the usual gamble), it should be wise to start gathering Agility, Strength, Haste, Spirit and Intellect gems for that tiny little space in your bank tab named "For the not-so-far away future".

If you're too greedy to stockpile just yet, just wait for the Beta! ;) I'm making decent amounts of money from Jewelcrafting at the moment anyway! But hey, putting some gems "to the side" can't hurt, can it?

If you're new to the gold making 'world' and only have low profits, don't quit. You're getting there. You see, I'm only a few months old as an AH player, and started just like that. Slow reselling every day items (cloth, enchanting mats...), buying and reselling glyphs (I don't recommend this, it's not effective), and I know the feeling. But after some time, that slow profit will turn into the seed money you will use to get even more money. Money makes money!

After getting some seed money (I made about 3k-4k gold), I leveled Inscription and later, I leveled Jewelcrafting. Those were the best choices I could ever take. Right now, I can make every single glyph in the game, and every day, I sell dozens of them (always for more than 10 gold each). But I also started small as a Scribe. You CAN'T get huge profits with just a few days into Inscription, because of all the 20-hour CD researches which will teach you new glyphs, and because of the time it takes to learn the market on your server. You need to be patient and you'll eventually get there; you'll be able to "feel" the market. With Inscription, I reached 20k gold for the first time ever, and did it feel good! JC followed and right now I make most of my income by selling popular gem cuts (both rare and epic). This required a lot of time obviously, to get most of the recipes people desire. After a few weeks/some months, money starts coming in, and when you start getting the hang of it, there's no way back, and you'll see your gold rise every day (considering you don't buy Mammoths on a daily basis).

My point with this post is, you always have to start small. Be patient, and do your best to learn the skills required to start making gold. I started reading money making blogs, and practiced the methods shown to find out what worked and what didn't on my server. Now I'm on 60k, and rising each day :)

Here's a list of the blogs and other websites that taught me most of what I know today, and also inspired me to always look for new ways of making gold, rather than not inovating:

-- Just My Two Copper Blog: This was the best place I could ever find. Markco shows a lot of gold making ways, that helped me building up my seed money to start doing business "on my own". His 20k Leveling Guide is also a very good source of information.

-- Just My Two Copper Forum: The biggest source of auctioneering information available on the internet. I'm currently an MVP there, and it's here where I get to know how other auctioneers think and it's here where we all share our experiences. It's a must-read for every auctioneer in the world. It's like the Magic Castle for magicians!

-- WoWenomics: This was more of a way of keeping me motivated. Reading thoughts of people experienced in real life business was a great inspiration, and they often bring on interesting posts.

-- Greedy Goblin: Even though I don't use Gevlon's methods, his blog is really interesting and lets you have a different look at WoW. He doesn't only show people how he makes his gold; he also explains why some people aren't as successful as others in the game.

Bottom line, you won't just 'sharpen' your skills out of thin air. You should learn from the best, and there are a lot more amazing blogs out there! Never underestimate others' knowledge, and never think you will start making crazy amounts of gold from day to night. That's no more than an illusion.

Quick tip! Because of all the Titanium farming going around after 3.2, people also farm Saronite obviously, and Saronite (along with Eternal Earths, Shadow...) is dumped at the AH in large quantities, meaning very low prices (yes, even lower than vendor sometimes!). You may want to combine your professions to multiply the profit you can make.

If you have a miner, any stack of Saronite Ore under 12.5 gold is profit, because 10 bars (20 ores) sell for 12,5 gold. I've seen quite a few farmers lately on trade "WTS Saronite Ore 10g a stack!", that's a great opportunity.

In addition to this, if you have a crafting profession that uses Saronite Bars (like Blacksmithing), you can craft even more valuable items. (Eternal Belt Buckles are my favourite choice, specially on raid nights)

If you have a JC, you can craft green rings (mats are a couple of Crystallized and some green gems). Disenchanting those is an amazing source of income; you'll get about double of your money back. (Note: You should always check the prices on your server beforehand!)

It's a chain! You just have to look through your professions and see how you can connect them for more profit.

Cataclysm sounds amazing. There isn't any feature that I don't like, even though I'm a bit reluctant about the stat changes (removing a lot of stats and merging them with others). How will this affect itemization? Will it turn gearing into an easy task, with just a few stats pre-determined for each class/role? We'll have to wait and see, but these stat changes will cause great disturbances in Jewelcrafting - reducing the number of gem cuts drastically-, won't they?

Archaeology seems a great feature. Only time will tell what mats it will use. If it's something BoE, I'll start stockpiling right now (even though the expansion should be over a year away).

Guild Leveling seems like an awesome idea too. Finally they implement something that rewards team work in an effective way, with stuff like mass resurrection and lower repairs. It's really something I'm looking forward to.

New races, the Goblins and the Worgens. I'm thrilled to know that the Alliance are finally getting a furry race, and that people will be able to have Goblin bank alts. My Worgen will be a Warlock; what about yours? :)

Now, I thought I should update the current blog situation, so:

Why no raiding related posts yet?I haven't mentioned raiding in any posts yet because I'm currently not able to raid due to technical problems. I will start posting about raids hopefully in a couple of weeks (can't give a specific date, for obvious reasons).

Planning on posting topics other than money and your thoughts?Yes. Oara made a nice suggestion, at the JMTC Forums, on the topic where I advertised my blog, and I'm definitely considering something like that. In the future, more topics should be added too.

How's the blog attendance so far?It's looking good considering the blog is only a few days old. The numbers are:

Not bad, an average of 48 visits a day :)

To all the readers, hope you're enjoying the content on Too Greedy so far. I'm probably going to change the layout of the page soon, when I find the inspiration to do it. Don't hesitate to comment the posts with anything you find worth it, either to add something to the post itself, or just to share your own experiences!

I discovered a nice place to farm Icy Dragonscales - The Primordial Hatchlings in Sholazar Basin. They have a 25-30% chance of dropping the Scales and these Scales are currently selling for a lot of money (just like Nerubian Chitin) because of the Ulduar patterns that require these. If you need quick money just pop to that place and you'll get quite a few scales easily and very quickly.

It was a great day. And I can't wait for my new shoulders in 3 days!Hope you find the farming place helpful. ;)

With Inscription you can: mill herbs for pigments, turn those pigments into inks, and turn inks (along with cheap parchments) into glyphs. There is a huge profit margin when it comes to ink/glyph price difference. It always depends on your server, but there is a niche you can explore almost always. Let's see how we profit with Inscription, shall we? I'll mention a few methods for a Scribe to make money with his profession.

First, you need to do the maths with the values of stuff from your server. You should check the AH for the price of:

"in your post "Making money as a Scribe - Analysis of the Inscription profession" you forgot to mention some of the lesser northrend herbs (which I try to buy all the time while everyone else scrambles for the adder's tongue) ... deadnettle, talandra's rose, fireleaf, and goldclover."

*Ink of the Sea - This is the ink that will give you your threshold (minimum price you will ever sell a glyph for). They are usually no higher than 5g each, but then again, this is server dependant.

*Snowfall Ink - This is obtained from Icy Pigments, which are rare pigments you get from Northrend herbs. Price usually varies from 5g to 30g (again, server dependant).

*Eternal Life - This is used to craft Darkmoon Cards of North. You should only look for the price of this if the Snowfall Ink market is close to dead (this happens on my server). "Darkmoon Card of the North" crafts one card randomly out of 32 possible, 8 from each of the 4 decks (Undeath, Prisms, Chaos or Nobles). It's a matter of luck, because only 1 kind of cards is profittable.

After you check the price of all these items, do the maths and find out which option lets you have the lowest glyph crafting cost (1 or 2 Ink of the Sea + Parchment, but the Parchment prices are neglectable, so focus on ink prices only for less confusion). To do the maths, you should consider: each stack of herbs awards you 6 Inks of the Sea and 1 Snowfall Ink, in average. If Snowfall Inks sell easily and the price of 1 is close to the price of a stack of herbs, you should ALWAYS buy the herbs, because it will allow you to have a very low Ink of the Sea cost. If Snowfall Inks don't sell, you should highly consider 2 options:**Buying Inks of the Sea directly from the AH if they're at decent prices (What's 'decent', you ask? It's the value which is lower than the majority of the glyphs shown at the AH).**Buying Eternal Lifes, and craft Darkmoon Cards of the North hoping for Nobles, which are the ones who make you profit a lot. The others usually don't, considering the 3x Eternal Life, 6x Snowfall Ink required.

With all these explanations, what I mean is that you should adapt your business to your server's economy. Always keep that in mind.

After doing all the maths (the longest part is over, yay!), you should find out which glyphs are most popular on your server. You can check a general list (gathered from many servers) of the most popular glyphs on WoWPopular. Note that you should not trust these lists blindly. You will only truly find out your server's demand by trying and succeding/failing.

Then, it's time to start crafting. Bring your (hopefully big) supply of Inks of the Sea to the Ink Trader in Dalaran, and start crafting all the glyphs you intend to sell. After the job is done, send the glyphs to your glyph bank alt. A glyphs-only bank alt with 32-slot Inscription bags is a must if your glyph supply is huge, otherwise you'll have to post your glyphs in a lot of posting sessions (I've got a glyphs-only bank alt, and have to do 2 or 3 posting sessions to be able to post all my glyphs!)

How to post all the glyphs, and for how much?

Personally I use (and love) the addon Quick Auctions. With it, you just have to:

*Decide the minimum price you're willing to sell your glyphs for (usually 2g or 3g above your ink cost, which you get by doing the maths explained above) - This is called your threshold.

*Decide how many of each glyph you post each time (usually 2 or 3 works the best, depending on the demand).

*Decide a fallback price. This is the price you set to your glyphs if no one else is posting a glyph of that kind (you should push the price up as far as you can, but be reasonable because no one will buy a glyph for 200g, for example).

*Decide the undercut value. 1 copper will do, and it will minimise the lowering of prices through heavy undercutting.

This is all very easy to do with the latest version of Quick Auctions, and you'll soon be in love with it like me.

And you're done. Just wait and you'll see your glyphs selling and making you earn a lot of money in no time.

This is it. I hope you find this useful to start doing business as a Scribe!

Patch 3.2 was a great boost on my wallet. I went from 20k to 60k in a couple of days! Here is how I did it:

Titanium - I had stockpiled close to 200 stacks of Titanium Ore. Sold 125 stacks on patch day and the following day, making a total 32-33k gold.

Obsidian Hatchlings - This was more of a random way I found of making money. I saw this new pet sold in Dalaran, the Obsidian Hatchling which costs 40g. Bought a few a posted 1 at the AH for 599g. It sold within minutes! When it sold, I posted another one, this time for 499g (because I had been undercut by someone). This one also sold quickly. After that I sold a few more for 499g. All this made me a total of nearly 2k gold. That's free money!

Glyphs - Glyphs of Obliterate were selling like crazy! It was impossible to have enough. 2 minutes after I posted the first 10, they were sold already. Then I crafted 50, and sold them quickly through the night. Other recently popular glyphs were selling well too, like Glyph of Seal of Vengeance (for Paladins) and other Death Knight glyphs (these were sold within seconds of the Obliterate ones, obviously bought by respecced DKs). Glyphs awarded me 1-2k on patch day.

Epic Gems - Surprisingly they weren't selling very well at first, but as time went by, and after raid times ended (after 22 PM), they started selling, awarding me another 1-2k gold. Red and Blue ones were the ones I sold for better amounts. The other colours weren't very popular on patch day.

As you see, making 40k wasn't hard. I spent close to 3 hours at the AH on patch day, that's 13,333g an hour. Let's hope for even better results on 3.3! :)

So Blizzcon 2009 is nearly here, and the internet is filled with speculation about the new expansion. I'm really excited about new stuff in the game, but don't expect it (and don't want it) to be released soon. Some people are already saying "OMG THIS SUCKS, I'M QUITTING!" based on rumours. Why does this kind of behaviour occur? This is a mistery to me. It has happened before the other 2 expansions were released, and keeps happening. People hate changes.

Let's look at this like this: two and half years after the Burning Crusade was released (January 2007), people are still asking for old school servers (with max level 60). Why does this happen? People like to repeat raids even more times than they do now every week? I mean, there were not many interesting things to do when we were 60 (pre-TBC). After the long time leveling our only option was doing instances. Scholomance, Stratholme, BRS...there were no dailies, no nothing! Is this 'feeling of nostalgy' empty, and would people still whine about something if they were given old school servers? I think they would.

Myself, I'm looking forward to finding out more about what Blizzard intends to implement in the game. I believe there is still a potential in WoW and it's not dead (or even dying), like many people say. I'm loving the game more than I ever did! And I think a vast population shares my opinion.

Greetings. This blog is related to the world's most played MMORPG, World of Warcraft, from an average player's point of view.

About Me

Hi, my name is Blackwolf. I'm the average player. My main interests in this game are raiding and earning money, and I'm kind of greedy. When it comes to spending money, I'm never up for it unless it's something I really want, like an improvement for my gear.
I used to play on Thunderhorn EU, but now I'm on Karazhan EU. My current characters are a Shaman (Verdocas) and a Death Knight (Carneirito). I also have characters on other realms which have been left behind over time due to server transfers, and my goal is to become one of the richest players on my realm.

I'm also an MVP at the JMTC Forums (a place I really recommend checking daily), and been playing WoW since Vanilla. I've experienced lots of trends, changes so I can say I'm quite experienced. Still, I'm not a hardcore player, which you will realise when you read my posts.

The purpose of this blog

I decided to create this blog to share my in-game adventures with the world, but I'm giving special attention to the money-making aspect of the game (even though I'll share my raiding adventures too, if they happen). I'll also talk about my Auction House adventures, mentioning my ways of making gold in a legal way, and sharing my (un)lucky moments when it comes to business. My goal is to be the richest player in my realm, and while having fun with it, I'll keep you updated on what happens on my bankers. I will also share my thoughts on game features, content, or anything else that I find relevant.

What to expect from this blog

-- A look at World of Warcraft from an average player's point of view (you may find similarities with your own way of thinking if you are also like me, game experience wise). This includes: thoughts on features in WoW, events, other players...

-- Descriptions of my in-game experiences, anything that relates to my daily life in WoW.

-- Ways of making gold in World of Warcraft, by farming, reselling at the AH, specific profession strategies, and anything I find worth posting that is related to this.

-- Analysis of my raids, if I do any. Any other raiding stuff I find worth of posting will be mentioned. Note that I'm not a hardcore raider, thus I probably won't be mentioning this on many posts. All topics non-money related are to be expected!

Final Notes

The blog is updated regularly. You will be able to know me as a player, and hopefully it will be a tool for readers, to learn with my mistakes and successes, as well as probably new ways of playing World of Warcraft. Enjoy!

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